More Weekend Goodies – Updated

Oh where to begin? People ask me why I don’t want to have kids. That would make there be more people like me, and I would think that was reason enough. But here’s the real reason. If I had one, it’d look like this.

I just started reading a blog that has some very good stuff, Dispaches From the Culture Wars. Ed Brayton came across some just plain bizarre news about cultural tension and gave it a very good write-up here.

Well. We’ve got dark matter. How ’bout that? Actually this is really cool because this is the first time direct observation has been accomplished!

And something I have not done in ages, here is a sweet Fark Photoshop contest. Standard Fark disclaimer: if you would complain if you stumbled onto something slightly offensive, please don’t go to Fark.

Lastly, if you’re wondering how many times the f-bomb can be dropped in five minutes, there’s only one man to ask. And Jon Stewart does ask him – Mr. Samuel L. Jackson! What’s this I’m hearing about snakes? And they’re on a plane?! Fark. :-)

And some late editions… some amusing news items. Did you know that you can (or at least could) watch Star Trek for your Ph.D thesis? How about that a burrito could be considered a weapon? Or that the US does advocate torture… of Saddam Hussein… by forcing him to watch Southpark?

Given my vast knowledge of German for those of you not as smart here is what he said:

How do many objects actually schwirren in our solar system rum? Colleague Hoopy Froop drew the attention of me today to an article that dark subject actually exists. Where is the border? To what do we find still everything? Can we find at all everything out over our solar system, over our universe?

I was actually impressed that the translation google gave was mostly understandable. Uh…wait, I translated it with my great German knowledge…

Ummm…

I guess I didn’t realize that we didn’t know that dark matter existed or not…I always assumed that we knew it. Well maybe not. Stuff like this is all confusing. I guess the question is what does this mean…all this dark matter, and that it seems that there is more dark matter than “light” (or possible visible) matter.

How little we actually know about the universe. I think we need to spend a ton of money on the space program (and also to discover the oceans here, because we still know so little about them too). I want to be around when we start doing really cool stuff in space, instead of just sending probes to our own planets.

Oh, this also makes me ask you the question:

Do you think that there is “intelligent life” on other planets in the galaxy/universe?